How local authorities and trusts can collaborate under Labour

There was an interesting article in TES about how LAs and trusts can work together. The author of the article is Hannah Woodhouse, who used to be the South West Regional Schools Commissioner.

She believes that there has been too much competition between LAs and trusts, when the reality is they should depend on each other and collaborate to boost outcomes.

She has been watching with interest the debate about regional or national versus local leadership of school systems, with both multi-academy trusts and local authorities (LAs) claiming to lead where we go next. She believes that for over a decade now, the leadership of our school system has been contested in this way. While on the ground around schools, sensible professionals just get on with working together, the national debate has on occasion become binary and polarising, characterised by mistrust, blame and a lack of understanding.

However, she believes that we are now at a crossroads and that decisions need to be made. The last decade of austerity, Covid-19 and cost-of-living challenges have pared back school funding and public services making collaboration essential. Some examples of where she believes we can develop joint work are:

• Encouraging a place-based model to improve attendance
• Bringing trusts and maintained schools together to reduce class sizes
• Working sub regionally on school improvement, place planning and inclusion
• Learning from many excellent special schools by networking new specialist resource bases and mainstream practice, reducing reliance on costly independent special provision
• Bringing services together – Sure Start like – schools, LA services, health and the voluntary sector to meet the needs of communities.

She finishes by saying “…It’s an exciting time. We should get on with it.”

Would you like to hear where our local authority think the future of education in Devon is going?  Come to the DAG Conference on 16^th November at Exeter Racecourse to hear Donna Manson Devon’s Chief Executive on the progress Devon County Council is making towards their vision for the future of education in the county.

For further details and registration please visit the DAG website www.dagdevon.uk.